UN peacekeepers leave East Timor

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED:A ‘liquidation team’ is to dismantle the UN presence amid calm, after factional violence had threatened to destroy the country in 2006

AFP, UNITED NATIONS

With the country’s oil-based sovereign wealth fund now above US$11 billion, it has resources.

Silas Everett of the Asia Foundation said the government has to work harder on improving the business environment.

“Like other poor, newly democratic, oil-dependent nations, Timor-Leste’s development dreams are likely to be increasingly interrupted by instances of corruption, largess and inefficiency in its institutions for some time,” he said in a recent commentary.

“It is these very institutions, abiding by and upholding the rule of law, that are needed to turn petro-dollars into broad based economic growth for the benefit of all rather than for a few powerful elite,” he said.